It’s hard to credit that nearly 20 years have passed since Collegium Vocale Gent’s account of this monumental collection, whose quality Lassus rarely surpassed. In the interval, both Herreweghe’s ensemble (Harmonia Mundi, 3/09) and Cappella Amsterdam (8/20) recorded a selection of late Lassus motets, for which I judged the Dutch ensemble to have surpassed the Belgians. There had been other complete recordings before Herreweghe’s, including The Hilliard Ensemble and Henry’s Eight, but given that Cappella Amsterdam and Collegium Vocale are identically constituted (even sharing some singers, which is remarkable given how much time has elapsed), each is the best comparator for the other.

The first thing to note is how much faster Reuss takes the music overall, clipping more than a quarter of an hour off the entire set. Yet, for all that it is also a livelier account than Herreweghe’s, the penitential tone is still discernible: this is because the delivery stays at a fairly consistent dynamic level, perhaps reflecting Lassus’s choice (noted in Bernhold Schmid’s fine booklet notes) to tone down the energetic style of his youth. But when he indulges in a striking bit of word-painting (at ‘Erubescant’ in the first psalm, for instance) they can be more responsive than Herreweghe, although in this respect the old Hilliard recording (3/87), though less even technically, has still more to offer. It should be said that the tonal quality is as pleasing and the technical quality as polished as one has come to expect from Cappella Amsterdam; as I’ve noted in the past, they sound both monumental and yet detailed. Despite the near-identical forces involved, then, the new set offers a rewardingly different view from its predecessors’, and hearing the two side by side is most instructive.

Having said all of that (and somewhat to my surprise), my earlier prediction that Herreweghe’s set was ‘unlikely to age or be superseded anytime soon’ still holds. His slower tempos notwithstanding (and in this case precisely because of them), his singers shape details more consistently and to greater purpose, bending the tactus and inflecting dynamics (albeit undemonstratively) so that Lassus’s sinuous lines come through beautifully clearly. In this case, I feel, it is the Belgians who tap deeper into the cycle’s affective potential.